Black Box
@ Playgound Festival in Leuven, July 6-13, 2009
Black Box is a sound installation and listening situation conceived by Myriam Van Imschoot, in collaboration with Kristien Van den Brande and Aymérick De Tapol. It was first presented ad Playground Festival in Stuk in Leuven where it was part of the encompassing installation Can I be your witness?.
In the installation Black Box the participants who were involved in the first edition of Crash Landing speak up. They were active in 1996 in Stuk, on the stage and in the wings. Thirteen years later can one listen to them in Black box, a sound essay that meanders from edited interviews and spoken word compositions to soundscapes.
“I wanted the installation to focus on the testimonies of the ex-participants of that first edition. I consider their memories to be the lingering traces, the sonic footprints to use a term from Halbwachs. I constructed a miniature black box, sparsely lit, and large enough to contain 1 to 15 people who were themselves like ghosts in this dim environment. In the black box there was another 'box': a jukebox, containing twenty singles (vinyl), made together with Kristien Van den Brande (my close collaborator) and the sound artist Aymérick de Tapol on the basis of the interview material. As dark as the black box was, the jukebox was glimmering in attendance for anyone to activate it by the touch of a button. Its shimmer put a visual anchor into the space, although its visual lure was the trigger for what basically was to be centered around sonic experience. 20 singles. 20 vinyls. Old style publishing as a form of literal 'inscription' in the disks. In my mind they constituted together a sound essay, or an audio-documentary that, if listened to in its entirety, would take you from the first radio announcement on Crash Landing (single 1, side a) to the applauses at the end of the Crash Landing (single 20, side b). In between those audio-moments at the far end of the scale one could hear a range of different registers, from 'pure', hardly edited interview extracts to more elaborate spoken word compositions and soundscapes. The visitor of the installation could select 'freely' from these options - going for a short ride through the documentary, or for a more extended trip - pressing the buttons and watching the vinyl spin inside the belly of this machine while the sounds bled into the space. The choice for the jukebox as vehicle for the oral archive was a huge one. The jukebox is admittedly more a fetish relict of the fifties, sixties, more than it is iconic for the 1990s. Yet, I notice in other work too, that I have come to enjoy the 'resistance' that comes with 'outdated mediums'. Especially, in an information society that favors speed and turns information into a flow without much friction, the anachronistic medium can thwart the automatisms and turn information back into experience through the workings of 'time'. The fact that the jukebox is also a pop icon, a popular music archive in miniature form, in contrast to the rubble, the babble, the interview fragments (with a very different status) generated more productive friction. This perhaps much to the surprise of visitors who had to give up on their expectation to hear the charts and open up for this 'other' material. In a way, this was the overall gesture behind this work. The overall ambiance was to 'displace' the jukebox, use ànd stir the connotations in its trail, without 'thickening' them. For example, I did not choose to create a loungy set-up around it, no coffee tables or comfy sofas, which would make up the habitual environment for it to function. The rather empty space was more reminiscent of the minimalism of art contexts, in which the jukebox remains ultimately the center object organizing the space, verging on that narrow line where many readymades linger, between cult and banality/commodity. There was a lot of objecthood (the jukebox, the vinyls as tangible records), which contrasted to the nature of the real work here: the 20 compositions, mere sound pieces, vibrations that stir the particles of the room. I am trying to think of the connections with your lectures and your comments on the individual versus collective memory. In this respect, the behavior of the visitors was very interesting to observe. If I would have used headsets (like is common in art exhibitions nowadays) then the listening situation could have become individual. The jukebox operates however very differently, as it constitutes a situation where individual choice is always negotiated within a social sphere. Apparently, visitors struggled with this. Many visitors could not identify with the choice someone else made, and felt like leaving the box, or just waited for 'their' turn. But since the machine operates with 'mechanical memory' and - in contrast to ipods and i-tunes - cannot be stopped halfway a single, this waiting was exposed. Time became a huge factor. What is 3 minutes and a half? What can be said in that length of time? It seems short, but to some teenagers (a young boy paraphrased it thus: ' we have the concentration span of an insect'; quote from the Simpsons) it seemed like an eternity. Again; the medium produces its own resistance, specificities, its thickness, turning information into experience. It's definitely one way to go against 'isolated, passive patterns of cultural consumption' that you speak of in your text.” (excerpt from letter by Myriam Van Imschoot to Ramsay Burt, 25 november 2009)
Credits Concept: Myriam Van Imschoot. Realization: Myriam Van Imschoot, Aymerick De Tapol, Kristien Van den Brande and Vincent Malstaf. Mastering: Fred Alstadt. Cutting engineer: Dubplate.be. Light and technical support: Karin Demedts. Production: Stuk. Co-production: Sarma, Vlaams Theater Instituut, My Other Work.